"To copyleft a program, we first state that it is copyrighted; then we
add distribution terms, which are a legal instrument that gives
everyone the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the program's
code or any program derived from it but only if the distribution terms
are unchanged . . . "

On or around Tuesday 02 October 2007 19:35, Ramanathan Muthaiah reorganised a
bunch of electrons to form the message:

> Just wondering, why all the GNU/Linux man pages refer to copyright
> only and do not have no reference / brief statement regd "copyleft".
>
> Quicky browsing through the
> "http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html", I did understand that
> this concept of copyleft is incorporated by applying copyright and
> then adding terms of distribution.
>
> To quote from the above URL,
>
> "To copyleft a program, we first state that it is copyrighted; then we
> add distribution terms, which are a legal instrument that gives
> everyone the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the program's
> code or any program derived from it but only if the distribution terms
> are unchanged . . . "
>
> Any thoughts ?

Not everything in a typical GNU/Linux is "copyleft" and different contributors
will have different approaches. If you look at man pages for code where the
FSF owns the copyright, e.g. emacs, you will see that they state their
copyright and add distribution terms, as quoted above.

Many other man pages are for code owned by other people who have a less
rigorous approach to copyright notices. Many man pages don't contain a
copyright notice at all.

Even the FSF man pages don't state the copyright for the code itself, just the
copyright on the man page.